October 19, 2016

Quali, the leading maker of cloud sandbox software for DevOps automation, today announced the general availability of CloudShell 7.1, which introduces application deployment for hybrid clouds with support for Amazon Web Services (AWS), among other technical advances. Recognizing the rapid adoption of hybrid cloud deployments, Quali now enables hybrid sandboxes that straddle public-private clouds to accelerate cloud adoption with lower risk and increased quality.

The Quali CloudShell platform automates and accelerates the DevOps lifecycle by providing dev, test, QA and compliance teams with personal replicas of their production environments within software sandboxes. The latest CloudShell 7.1 release includes out-of-the-box support for AWS via the Quali community, along with existing support for VMWare vCenter, and Docker. Support for Microsoft Azure and the Google Cloud Platform are planned for future releases.

Environment sandbox templates consisting of a pre-defined set of components (such as resources, connections, inputs, properties etc.) enable enterprises to define a uniform standard for new environments. The CloudShell Sandbox Template is provided off-the-shelf with CloudShell. It is configured to run CloudShell’s Setup and Teardown processes that perform the following important operations:

Deploy and de-provision apps from the CloudShell and the cloud provider

Enable the use of AWS EC2 Apps by running connectivity procedures that set up the AWS VPC and subnet for the reservation

ConnectLink connectivity routes between resources and/or apps

In addition, users can now easily add custom data from Sandboxes into the CloudShell Insight business intelligence (BI) module and immediately expose them for use in dashboards, without any programming.

For on-premise data center or VMware vCenter-based private cloud deployments, the Quali Developer Community has also provided open standards for Shells, which are the building blocks for sandboxes. The new Shell standards make it easy for developers to create and share Shells within the developer community and open source them. The latest standards include updates to the Network Shell, along with standards for new Shells including Basic Shells, Firewall, Traffic, Power Distribution Units (PDU), and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) Shells.

Advanced VLAN features in CloudShell 7.1 make it easier for developers to connect virtual and physical endpoints for on-premise VMware vCenter deployments.

“As enterprises shift to a ‘cloud-first’ model, one of the biggest challenges is in bridging the operating models of old world IT with the new. Companies that want to do cloud must embrace DevOps. Quali’s Hybrid cloud sandboxes with public cloud support for providers like Amazon Web Services can be a very powerful tool to accelerate cloud adoption with reduced risk and lower cost. It’s a DevOps-friendly way to reduce hybrid cloud speed bumps,” said William Fellows, VP Research and Founder, 451 Research Group.

“We see considerable value in having consistent DevOps processes across private and public clouds. The ability to spin up sandboxes for Hybrid cloud deployments with standardized environments and end-to-end visibility can allow development and test teams to make the best use of on-premise and public cloud resources, simplify workflows and rollout releases faster with higher quality and reduced risk,” said John Jones, DevOps and IT architect, Cisco.

“We know that more enterprise computing is migrating to public clouds and hybrid clouds, so this 7.1 release reflects the critical nature of hybrid sandbox software for the most complex infrastructure environments that now bridge private datacenters to public clouds and hybrid clouds,” said Shashi Kiran, Chief Marketing Officer of Quali. “Integrating AWS deployment paths to CloudShell will greatly benefit our enterprise customers increasing the pace of cloud adoption with better governance mechanisms, while reducing cost and enhancing quality. Enterprise IT and DevOps teams should definitely evaluate Quali first for these complex Dev/Test environments”

Quali CloudShell 7.1 Enterprise Edition is available immediately as a free upgrade for existing customers. The Free Developer Edition is available for immediate download for registered users at the Quali Community. Enterprise Edition is available for new users with subscription pricing starting at $30,000 per year plus $3,000 per concurrent sandbox per year.

Hybrid Cloud Webinar

Quali will host an upcoming Webinar on Nov. 2 about moving datacenter workloads to hybrid clouds and public clouds. Quali CTO Joan Wrabetz and CMO Shashi Kiran will discuss how cloud sandboxes can speed up application roll-outs and make hybrid cloud deployments more successful. Webinar attendees will also receive a free ebook, Introduction to DevOps. Click here to learn more and register.